'The Autobiography of Fidel Castro'

Fiction

a photo from the collection of author Norberto Fuentes, shown with Fidel Castro.

a photo from the collection of author Norberto Fuentes, shown with Fidel Castro.

Photo: Courtesy, Norberto Fuentes

Photo: Courtesy, Norberto Fuentes

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a photo from the collection of author Norberto Fuentes, shown with Fidel Castro.

a photo from the collection of author Norberto Fuentes, shown with Fidel Castro.

Photo: Courtesy, Norberto Fuentes

'The Autobiography of Fidel Castro'

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"No one owns the past, at least not until it is written," Fidel Castro shrewdly observes at the start of his faux "autobiography" - the deliciously wicked construct devised by Norberto Fuentes. "I've learned something else," Castro adds: "the Revolution is always creating the past."

In other words, as the cliche goes, history gets written by the winners. And therein lies the conceit of this entertaining, edifying and voluminous work (572 pages!) that purports to channel the wily Cuban strongman. As served up by Fuentes, a Cuban intellectual who fled his homeland in 1994, this brew of history and satire was originally published in Spanish at even greater length - perhaps fitting for the famously verbose Castro. For the English-language version, the book has been tweaked and pruned. Most Cubaphiles will find Fuentes' effort to be a masterful act of ventriloquism, offering a Castro who is prideful, intuitively Machiavellian and relentlessly cynical.

"Almost all civil wars begin as a demonstration that goes out of control," Castro points out. "Controlling the streets," he emphasizes, was the crucial key to his maintaining power. To that end, opponents - or "the enemy," as he puts it - must not be allowed to gather "in groups of more than two or three individuals."

Fuentes' Maximum Leader holds forth on all matters - great and small - just as Castro, now Cuba's convalescent-in-chief, does in his "Reflections" - the hundreds of columns he has written for the state-run media since his medically mandated retirement after emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006.

Fuentes captures much of Castro, balancing the brilliant with the despotic. After all, he knows his man, having formerly been a Fidel literary favorite, along with Gabriel García Márquez. Like the Colombian Nobelist, Fuentes is fascinated by Latin American strongmen - and their enemies. (It is rumored in Miami circles that Fuentes also enjoys time with Luis Posada Carriles, Castro's would-be assassin of many decades.)

The first attempt at a Castro biography appeared in April 1959, with a collection of his letters titled "Cartas del Presidio" - "Letters From Prison." The letters are an early road map of Castro's political and personal ambitions, filled with warmth and affection toward supporters. To those who opposed him, there were rages and rants.

Since then, there have been another dozen major Castro biographies, culminating with Castro's own effort last year, "My Life," which came in at roughly 200,000 words, based on some 100 hours of conversation with the Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet. Castro was still glossing the text in November 2006, according to Ramonet. That would mean that while the Cuban leader was dangling between life and death, being fed intravenously, 50 pounds thinner and barely able to sit up, he summoned his uber-human will to rewrite his memoirs. "I wanted to finish it because I didn't know how much time I'd have," Castro explained to a friend.

What is most remarkable are the many similarities between Castro's version and that of Fuentes. However, when Fuentes' Castro shares the details of his romantic and sexual history, we know we have fully entered the realm of farce. Say what one will - enemies and friends alike attest to Castro's mania for privacy.

But vividly, sometimes hilariously, brought to life is an array of Cuban truisms. "My mother, like the majority of Cuban women, was most concerned with her male offsprings' reproductive apparatus," Fuentes/Castro informs us. "In Cuba, a man has reached full maturity ... when his mother stops examining his pinga."

In scant evidence are positive or human qualities - even ones confirmed by Castro's letters and disgruntled relatives who have fled Cuba. For example, Idalmis Menendez, formerly married to Castro's son, Alex, said she often witnessed Castro interacting with warm spontaneity toward his family, especially his grandchildren. "We had a good relationship," she said in a 2006 interview. "He was always affectionate with me."

Above all, this monumentally proud and narcissistic Castro trusts no one. And this is certainly true. In "My Life," Castro said he learned his lessons early. "He was a compañero," he said of a colleague turned informer. "I trusted him. That's the mistake. You shouldn't trust someone just because he's a friend." In a letter written in 1954, Castro advised a comrade to "maintain a deceptively soft touch and smile with everyone," adding, "There will be enough time later to squash all the cockroaches together."

To that end, Fuentes' Castro employs the services of the ruthless Ramiro Valdes as henchman and spymaster who surveils even "heroic compañeros." The very same Valdes has made a stunning political comeback, just recently promoted to vice president of the Council of State, making him one of the most powerful figures in Cuba.

Fuentes contends that his "autobiography" is based on confirmable events and facts, but there are a smattering of minor errors of dates, names, etc. At one point, Fuentes writes that Castro's father died in 1956 when his son was in the Sierra, when Fidel was in Mexico. However, Fuentes is the beneficiary of the superb editing and translation of Anna Kushner, whose deftness reminds one of Natasha Wimmer.

The continuous play between fact and fiction in the book is nicely augmented by the historic photographs that stud the text. Quite fittingly, it concludes with a 1986 photograph of Castro, his arm draped along the shoulder of a suited-up Fuentes, enjoying a whispered confidence from the writer cum courtier. Perhaps one man the comandante-en-jefe should not have trusted.

It was inevitable that Castro would seek to have the last word, but Norberto Fuentes may have trumped him.